the gospel and economic liberation
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
I’ve been reading Miroslav Volf’s Work in the Spirit. Hard work to read (at least on the train), but interesting. One side point that stood out was this…
Economic alienation … often directly or indirectly causes alienation from God. We read in Exodus, for instance, that the oppressed and exploited Israelite slaves “did not listen to Moses on account of their … cruel bondage” (Exod 6:9). Economic alienation hindered their believing God and grasping the promise of liberation.
I found this fascinating and it brings out something that I’d never heard anywhere else. (Oh, I’m sure someone has covered it, probably in one of the books on my shelf, but I wasn’t paying attention…)
In the frequent discussions of the relationship between the gospel and social justice, I’ve seen few, if any, consider the possibility that social justice might, in some cases, be an important first step for people to hear the good news. We discuss whether social justice might be a significant consequence of the gospel or whether it provides some demonstration of God’s liberation, but we don’t consider that it might need to come first in some situations, that people might need to be helped at a more basic level before they can hear what we have to say.
But if we truly believe that life is not divided into the material/secular and the spiritual, is it so unreasonable that alienation in economics, work or daily life can make it hard for us to grasp the deeper ‘promise of liberation’?
And if we take serious what we see in the story of the Moses, then how should this affect our actions? Perhaps it should make us re-consider our attitude to third-world debt or fair trading or oppressive work environments…
Tags: justice, Miroslav Volf, work
markets and morality
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
A few months ago I went to the Veritas event in Cambridge (UK): Can Capital Markets be Moral?. It was a ’round table’ discussion with a diverse set of speakers — with some coming from the city, some from theology and some from a social entrepreneur angle. All interesting, but perhaps a little frustrating at times as the issues they addressed were so wide ranging there was no clear debate and I’m not sure the question really got address head on.
One view put forward by a couple of speakers was (roughly) ‘markets are structures and structures cannot be moral or amoral — only people.’ (I’m not sure how consistently this was held — the line between market and the people in the market seemed to blur places. Speakers also said things like ‘regulation is no use, the market gets around regulation’. But leaving that aside…)
All this raised a question for me: if we changed the subject to something like Can Brothels be Moral? would the speakers have taken a similar approach? It seems to me that that is a structure that has some moral content.
Perhaps we need to say that when people develop structures those structures tend to embody their values. So, a structure will end up encouraging or discouraging certain values, certain moral stances.
Interestingly, the first Reith Lecture this year was also on Markets and Morals. The lecturer — the excellent Michael Sandel — noted this:
…markets are not mere mechanisms. They embody certain norms. They presuppose, and also promote, certain ways of valuing the goods being exchanged. Economists often assume that markets are inert, that they do not touch or taint the goods they regulate. But this is a mistake. Markets leave their mark. Often market incentives erode or crowd out non-market incentives.
The whole lecture is worth a listen/read. His view is that we need to have a proper debate about the morals and what areas of life should be market-free, rather than allow market-creep to distort our lives.
Fair Trade as cultural artefact
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
Prompted (obliquely) by recent negative comments about Fair Trade (i.e. the Fair Trade mark and associated organisation) on the Jubilee Centre blog (here and here) and also by recent thoughts on reading culture, I thought it would be interesting to try a hermeneutic of Fair Trade. Perhaps looking at FT as a cultural artefact will shed light the criticisms.
What does FT make more difficult/impossible? The main thing the FT mark makes more difficult is for consumers and manufacturers to disassociate their actions from the actions at the other end of the supply chain. The existence of Fair Trade forces the buyer to think about issues along the chain. On the other hand, it makes it difficult for ethical suppliers who, for whatever reason, don’t want to use the FT brand to emphasise their ethical status without some kind of branding, etc.
‘Whilst it is clear that fair trade might bring some benefits to particular groups, whether it brings significant net benefits to the poor in general is questionable. Moreover, the claim that fair trade transactions are more “just” cannot be substantiated. Customers also might be surprised to learn that the majority of the Fairtrade Foundation’s income is spent on promoting its own brand.’
Tags: culture, Culture Making (Crouch), justice
apologetics, logic and justice
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I was reminded recently about the classic logical fallacy of post-modernism — the refusal of all meta-narratives functions itself as meta-narrative and before you know it PoMo will eat itself. Now, I have no argument with that — the logic works. But somehow the latent post-modernist in me doesn’t find it a very satisfying line. We can also consider the description by Curtis Chang of a conversation he had (discussed in Engaging Unbelief):
After an hour of lengthy debate, I thought I had maneuvered him into admitting a critical inconsistency in his logic. All my apologetics textbooks assured me that this represented a decisive accomplishment. Surely I had “won” a significant battle![My conversation partner] contemplated his inconsistency for a moment, shrugged and replied, “Yeah, well, so what? … Who’s to say that your logic isn’t all made up? Who’s to say that everything isn’t just made up?”
It seems like the logic isn’t the key issue. Perhaps we get a clue as to what is from the classic definition of post-modernism from Lyotard:
Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives.
and the comment by Derrida that
De-construction is justice.
Postmodernism isn’t formed as a logical alternative, but is essentially a distrust of the big stories. At heart it is a justice thing. (Yeah, ‘Whose justice?’, thank you Prof.MacIntyre , but we’ll press on.) As has been pointed out often, it’s a distrust based on seeing the injustice that the meta-narratives bring — oppression of minority views etc.
Look at the current attacks on religion. Some might have a pop at issues of rationality and belief, but most of the issues are the apparent controlling nature and forcing of views, etc.
If you read Dan Kimball’s excellent ‘They like Jesus, but not the church”. The complaints against the church are primarily in this kind of category — it’s judgmental and negative, etc., etc.
So, while the logical problem is important, maybe it is not the correct point of contact. More on that anon…
Tags: apologetics, Engaging Unbelief (Chang), justice, postmodernism
giving and justice
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
An interesting quote from Francis Schaeffer (The Great Evangelical Disaster)
… there is the question of the compassionate use of wealth … this means two things: first, making it with justice; and then using it with real compassion. As a matter of fact, I have said a number of times and places where I hope it counted that I think when Christians get to heaven and they speak of how much they gave to missions, to build schools, and so on, that the Lord is going to tell them it would have been better if they had had less money to give and had made their money with justice.
I’m pretty sure that we can extend this principle to ensuring that there is justice when we spend money. That having a little less money because we ensured justice in our purchasing is more important than maximising what we have to give.
For me it seems that it is sometimes easier to give money than to spend a little more on something that is traded fairly. Perhaps it is a learnt inclination to maximise what I have and look out for the good deal. I presume this isn’t the same for everyone, but perhaps we have our own reasons that hold us back.
I don’t think it is much of a stretch to imagine that, when Paul encourages giving in his letters, he would have been unimpressed if the people the giving is aimed at were simultaneously being exploited. Or if the exploitation was of others. If you don’t agree then a quick glance at Proverbs or the prophets may make you think again.
It really doesn’t make sense to help people with our giving and then exploit them, or others, with our spending.
I know fair trade isn’t a new thing, but we don’t often set it in the context of giving. At least in our culture, they are two side of the same issue.
Perhaps one approach is to set aside money that is specifically there to allow us to buy fairly traded goods, as well as setting aside money to give. Perhaps making a conscious choice in this way will allow us to give things the proper priority.
Tags: justice
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...